Comment Reference link? (Score 1) 1
Does this also say something more about the "coffee nap"?
Submission + - Caffeine Has a Weird Effect on Your Brain While You're Asleep (sciencealert.com) 1
alternative_right writes: Caffeine was shown to increase brain signal complexity, and shift the brain closer to a state of 'criticality', in tests run by researchers from the University of Montreal in Canada. This criticality refers to the brain being balanced between structure and flexibility, thought to be the most efficient state for processing information, learning, and making decisions.
Submission + - KU Leuven researchers develop method to permanently disable HIV virus (belganewsagency.eu)
nrosier writes: Researchers at KU Leuven have developed a method to render HIV viruses permanently harmless. The research was published on Thursday in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
Currently, 600,000 people worldwide still die from HIV infection every year. However, thanks to antiretroviral drugs, patients' quality of life has improved significantly and the number of new infections has fallen dramatically. However, as the medication only suppresses the virus, patients must take it for life.
Researchers at KU Leuven have now discovered a way to disable the virus completely in cells in a laboratory environment. Professor of molecular medicine Zeger Debyser describes this as a "scientific breakthrough". "Much clinical research is still needed before a new treatment can be developed, but this is already a big step forward."
Currently, 600,000 people worldwide still die from HIV infection every year. However, thanks to antiretroviral drugs, patients' quality of life has improved significantly and the number of new infections has fallen dramatically. However, as the medication only suppresses the virus, patients must take it for life.
Researchers at KU Leuven have now discovered a way to disable the virus completely in cells in a laboratory environment. Professor of molecular medicine Zeger Debyser describes this as a "scientific breakthrough". "Much clinical research is still needed before a new treatment can be developed, but this is already a big step forward."
Submission + - How Trump is hacking away at U.S. cyber defenses (fastcompany.com)
tedlistens writes: Eight years after creating the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
Trump's second administration is ripping up parts of the country’s cyber playbook and taking many of its best players off the field, from threat hunters and election defenders at CISA to the leader of the NSA and Cyber Command. Amid a barrage of severe attacks like Volt Typhoon and rising trade tensions, lawmakers, former officials, and cyber professionals say that sweeping and confusing cuts are making the country more vulnerable and emboldening its adversaries. “There are intrusions happening now that we either will never know about or won’t see for years because our adversaries are undoubtedly stepping up their activity, and we have a shrinking, distracted workforce,” says Jeff Greene, a cybersecurity expert who has held top roles at CISA and the White House.
Comment Re:Luckily (Score 1) 101
Bingo. (no mod points today)
Comment Re:if u suck the carbon out of the sea (Score 3, Interesting) 70
I wish I had mod points for this. My son-in-law works in this stuff and he's been frustrated about resistance to carbon-reduction efforts. The specific one he mentioned a while back I believe involved adding a (possibly calcium-containing) base to let a precipitate fall onto the sea bed sequestering the carbon. People were worried about sticking basic chemicals into the sea without realizing that reducing acidity itself was good in addition to carbon sequestration - that they're actually related.
Submission + - China Halts Rare Earth Exports to U.S. (thegatewaypundit.com)
AmiMoJo writes: China has halted exports of seven critical rare earth elements to the United States, a move that threatens to disrupt supply chains across key American industries, including automotive, semiconductor, and aerospace sectors. China’s Ministry of Commerce recently added seven rare earth elements—including dysprosium, terbium, and lutetium—to its restricted export list. These elements are essential for manufacturing high-performance magnets used in electric vehicles, advanced weaponry, and consumer electronics.
Additionally: US chipmakers outsourcing manufacturing will escape China's tariffs
U.S. chipmakers that outsource manufacturing will be exempt from China's retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports, according to a notice by the main Chinese semiconductor association on Friday.
Given the highly specialized and multi-country nature of chip supply chains, there was uncertainty within the industry about how tariffs would be applied to chip imports.
"For all integrated circuits, whether packaged or unpackaged, the declared country of origin for import customs purchases is the location of the wafer fabrication plant," the state-backed China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA), which represents the country's largest chip companies, said in an "urgent notice" on its WeChat account.
For U.S. chip designers such as Qualcomm and AMD that outsource manufacturing to Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC 2330.TW, Chinese customs authorities will classify these chips' place of origin as Taiwan, according to EETop, an information platform and forum for Chinese chipmakers.
This means China-based companies importing such chips will not be forced to pay China's retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports, EETop said on its WeChat account.
https://www.reuters.com/techno...
Additionally: US chipmakers outsourcing manufacturing will escape China's tariffs
U.S. chipmakers that outsource manufacturing will be exempt from China's retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports, according to a notice by the main Chinese semiconductor association on Friday.
Given the highly specialized and multi-country nature of chip supply chains, there was uncertainty within the industry about how tariffs would be applied to chip imports.
"For all integrated circuits, whether packaged or unpackaged, the declared country of origin for import customs purchases is the location of the wafer fabrication plant," the state-backed China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA), which represents the country's largest chip companies, said in an "urgent notice" on its WeChat account.
For U.S. chip designers such as Qualcomm and AMD that outsource manufacturing to Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC 2330.TW, Chinese customs authorities will classify these chips' place of origin as Taiwan, according to EETop, an information platform and forum for Chinese chipmakers.
This means China-based companies importing such chips will not be forced to pay China's retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports, EETop said on its WeChat account.
https://www.reuters.com/techno...
Comment Re:Silly question. (Score 1) 179
Came looking for this. From what I can see, the people pushing AI the hardest have their own agenda, and that agenda does not appear to be good for me in the long run. I've also read of some good things being done with AI, like protein folding and other science-related stuff that you don't hear much about. I would also suspect that in the sciences they understand the pitfalls of AI better and are being careful to at least try to not delude themselves.
Submission + - IRS goes after gig workers instead of billionaire tax dodgers (boingboing.net)
An anonymous reader writes: While billionaires stash fortunes in offshore havens, the IRS is targeting gig workers who make a few bucks answering questions on a platform where people earn side income by sharing expertise.
A federal court in California has authorized the IRS to demand records from JustAnswer. While ProPublica revealed that America's wealthiest often pay lower tax rates than schoolteachers, the IRS is focusing its investigative muscle on gig workers trying to earn extra income.
"The world is getting smaller for tax cheats," crowed IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, in a Department of Justice press release – though apparently not small enough to catch the billionaire class exploiting sophisticated tax avoidance schemes. While JustAnswer users face scrutiny, the wealthiest Americans continue employing armies of accountants to legally dodge billions in taxes through complex trusts and partnerships that the IRS fails to audit.
In the press release, Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Hubbert warned that "those who choose to be on the forefront of the gig economy must be aware of, and abide by, all their tax obligations." I have news for you, Mr. Hubbert — no one "chooses" to work in the gig economy; it's a last resort for millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet in an economy where stable, full-time jobs with benefits like yours have become increasingly scarce.
The IRS's priorities are clear: It's easier to squeeze blood from a stone than to challenge the complex tax shelters of the ultra-rich. So while billionaires enjoy their legal tax loopholes, the veterinarian answering late-night pet questions better keep perfect records — the tax man is watching.
Previously:
IRS admits it audits poor people because auditing rich people is too expensive
How the super-rich defeated the IRS's crack Global High Wealth unit
A federal court in California has authorized the IRS to demand records from JustAnswer. While ProPublica revealed that America's wealthiest often pay lower tax rates than schoolteachers, the IRS is focusing its investigative muscle on gig workers trying to earn extra income.
"The world is getting smaller for tax cheats," crowed IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, in a Department of Justice press release – though apparently not small enough to catch the billionaire class exploiting sophisticated tax avoidance schemes. While JustAnswer users face scrutiny, the wealthiest Americans continue employing armies of accountants to legally dodge billions in taxes through complex trusts and partnerships that the IRS fails to audit.
In the press release, Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Hubbert warned that "those who choose to be on the forefront of the gig economy must be aware of, and abide by, all their tax obligations." I have news for you, Mr. Hubbert — no one "chooses" to work in the gig economy; it's a last resort for millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet in an economy where stable, full-time jobs with benefits like yours have become increasingly scarce.
The IRS's priorities are clear: It's easier to squeeze blood from a stone than to challenge the complex tax shelters of the ultra-rich. So while billionaires enjoy their legal tax loopholes, the veterinarian answering late-night pet questions better keep perfect records — the tax man is watching.
Previously:
IRS admits it audits poor people because auditing rich people is too expensive
How the super-rich defeated the IRS's crack Global High Wealth unit
Comment Re: Oh no! ...Anyway. (Score 4, Insightful) 235
Boy, I wish I had moderation points today. Sadly you've hit the nail right on the head. Back around 2016 we entered what I call "The Fiction / Reality Inversion," and I've had a tough time reading fiction ever since. If you had tried to sell the last decade as a plot to a story of movie more than ten years ago they would have scoffed at it as silly and impossible. Today it's where we live.
The rise of anti-intellectualism in the US is helping to throw away the nation's future. Wealth-hoarding is helping with that, too. (Pure science is practically never profitable in the short run, but almost always in the long term.)
Comment Re:CEO speak (Score 4, Interesting) 38
Well as a former (retired in 2023) Marvell employee, I have to say that they were a great employer - I liked working there as an ordinary engineer.
I started with IBM in the days of the "good IBM" and watched it turn into the "bad IBM". Then IBM sold me along with a few thousand of my closest friends and a bunch of real estate to Global Foundries. Then after a few years Global Foundries dropped off of the leading edge technologies and sold me along with a few hundred close friends to Marvell, where I worked until I retired. Though I spent my career in the East, Marvell the company seemed to have more of the West Coast culture, which was in some ways closer to the "good IBM".
Submission + - The Onion buys Alex Jones's Infowars (bbc.com)
skam240 writes: "Satirical news publication The Onion has bought Infowars, the media organisation headed by right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, for an undisclosed price at a court-ordered auction.
The Onion said that the bid was secured with the backing of families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who won a $1.5bn (£1.18bn) defamation lawsuit against Jones for spreading false rumours about the massacre."
The Onion said that the bid was secured with the backing of families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who won a $1.5bn (£1.18bn) defamation lawsuit against Jones for spreading false rumours about the massacre."
Submission + - The Onion buys Infowars
Black Parrot writes: No, this isn't an Onion story:
New York Times
Associated Press
NBC
CNN Business
I'm not even going to try a joke.
New York Times
Associated Press
NBC
CNN Business
I'm not even going to try a joke.
Submission + - How a Micro-Budget Student Film Changed Sci-Fi Forever (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In the early 70s, young filmmakers John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon created a spaceship tale for a graduation project – little knowing it would influence Alien and many other works. Made for $60,000 by film school students, horror maestro John Carpenter's directorial debut Dark Star is now regarded as a sci-fi cult classic. Having just turned 50 years old, it's a world away from much of the sci-fi that came before it and would come after, neither space odyssey nor space opera, rather a bleak, downbeat and often absurd portrait of a group of people cooped together in a malfunctioning interstellar tin can. Arguably its most famous scene consists of an existential debate between an astronaut and a sentient bomb. Dark Star was a collaboration between Carpenter, who directed and scored the film, and Dan O'Bannon, who in addition to co-writing the script, acted as editor, production designer, and visual effects supervisor, as well as playing the volatile, paranoid Sergeant Pinback. They met as budding filmmakers at the University of Southern California. "While [Carpenter and O'Bannon] couldn't be more dissimilar in personality, they were both very energetic and focused," says Daniel Griffiths, director of Let There Be Light: The Odyssey of Dark Star (2010), the definitive documentary about the making of the film.
The sci-fi films of this period tended to be bleak and dystopian, explains John Kenneth Muir, author of The Films of John Carpenter – films like Silent Running (1972), in which all plant life on Earth is extinct, or George Lucas's 1971 debut THX-1138, in which human emotion is suppressed. "Dark Star arrived in this world of dark, hopeless imaginings, but took the darkness one step further into absurd nihilism." Carpenter and O'Bannon set out to make the "ultimate riff on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey," says Griffiths. While Kubrick's 1968 film, explains Muir, was one "in which viewers sought meaning in the stars about the nature of humanity, there is no meaning to life in Dark Star". Rather, says Muir, it parodies 2001 "with its own sense of man's irrelevance in the scheme of things". Where Kubrick scored his film with classical music, Dark Star opens with a country song, Benson, Arizona. (A road in the real-life Benson is named in honour of the film). The film was even released with the tagline "the spaced-out odyssey." Dark Star captured the mood of the time in which it was made, says Muir, the atmosphere of Nixon's America. "The 1960s was all about utopian dreaming and bringing change to America in the counterculture. The 1970s represent what writer Johnny Byrne called 'The wake-up from the hippie dream', a reckoning with the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same." [...]
When Dark Star premiered at the FILMEX expo in 1974, the audience response was largely positive. "They recognised the film's absurdist humour and celebrated its student film roots," says Griffiths. It had a limited theatrical release in 1975, but it was not a commercial success. "The film met with negative reviews from critics, and general disinterest from audiences," says Muir. "Both Carpenter and O'Bannon realised that all the struggles they endured to make the film did not matter to audiences, they only cared about the finished product. I think they were discouraged," says Griffiths. The growth of the VHS market, however, helped it find its audience and propelled it towards cult status. Its influence can still be felt, perhaps most directly in Ridley Scott's Alien, for which O'Bannon, who died in 2009, wrote the screenplay. The two films share DNA. Alien is also set on a grotty working vessel with a bickering crew, only this time the alien wasn't played for laughs.
The sci-fi films of this period tended to be bleak and dystopian, explains John Kenneth Muir, author of The Films of John Carpenter – films like Silent Running (1972), in which all plant life on Earth is extinct, or George Lucas's 1971 debut THX-1138, in which human emotion is suppressed. "Dark Star arrived in this world of dark, hopeless imaginings, but took the darkness one step further into absurd nihilism." Carpenter and O'Bannon set out to make the "ultimate riff on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey," says Griffiths. While Kubrick's 1968 film, explains Muir, was one "in which viewers sought meaning in the stars about the nature of humanity, there is no meaning to life in Dark Star". Rather, says Muir, it parodies 2001 "with its own sense of man's irrelevance in the scheme of things". Where Kubrick scored his film with classical music, Dark Star opens with a country song, Benson, Arizona. (A road in the real-life Benson is named in honour of the film). The film was even released with the tagline "the spaced-out odyssey." Dark Star captured the mood of the time in which it was made, says Muir, the atmosphere of Nixon's America. "The 1960s was all about utopian dreaming and bringing change to America in the counterculture. The 1970s represent what writer Johnny Byrne called 'The wake-up from the hippie dream', a reckoning with the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same." [...]
When Dark Star premiered at the FILMEX expo in 1974, the audience response was largely positive. "They recognised the film's absurdist humour and celebrated its student film roots," says Griffiths. It had a limited theatrical release in 1975, but it was not a commercial success. "The film met with negative reviews from critics, and general disinterest from audiences," says Muir. "Both Carpenter and O'Bannon realised that all the struggles they endured to make the film did not matter to audiences, they only cared about the finished product. I think they were discouraged," says Griffiths. The growth of the VHS market, however, helped it find its audience and propelled it towards cult status. Its influence can still be felt, perhaps most directly in Ridley Scott's Alien, for which O'Bannon, who died in 2009, wrote the screenplay. The two films share DNA. Alien is also set on a grotty working vessel with a bickering crew, only this time the alien wasn't played for laughs.
Comment Related, but different (Score 1) 56
As for using boron and expecting nuclear things to happen, there is something similar that is already a thing. It's called boron-neutron capture therapy. It involves a chemotherapy medication that is not yet active. It incorporates boron in its structure, but is not actually active until the boron captures a neutron and transmutes into carbon. The idea is to inject the medication then aim a neutron beam at the tumor. The substance is transmuted at the beam and becomes active - but only there.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
So transmuting boron really is a thing. Whether it captures a proton as easily as it captures a neutron is another question.
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